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Obama’s First 100 Days: Spotlight on North Korea

US President Barack Obama speaks on North Korea in Prague on April 5, 2009. (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)

by John Delury

Originally published in the World Policy blog, April 30, 2009

President Barack Obama’s policy team is making inroads on a less
hostile, more direct relationship with states like Iran, Syria,
Venezuela, and Cuba. The manifestations may look ad hoc—a friendly
video message; conference sideline handshakes; partial lifting of
travel restrictions; dispatch of envoys to a rarely-visited foreign
capital. But the sum total indicates a new spirit animating American
foreign policy toward troublesome, alienated, or “rogue” countries. A
kind of axis of engagement seems to be taking shape.

There
is one noticeable exception: the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
(DPRK), a spoke in the wheel of George W. Bush’s “axis of evil.” One
hundred days into the Obama Age, it hardly feels like the beginning of
a new era in U.S.-North Korea relations. Considering the extremely
narrow channels of communication between the two countries, there is
ample room for misunderstanding, conflict, and perception gap, even in
so short a time. Foreign policy elites in Washington and Pyongyang may
be telling themselves very different stories of what’s happened since
January.

How would North Korea’s ruling elite evaluate Obama’s first 100
days, and what questions are they asking themselves about this new
American leader?

Transition politics and envoy diplomacy in the early days of the
Obama administration may have sent Pyongyang the signal that any new
departure in U.S.-North Korea relations, for better or worse, will come
at North Korea’s initiative. In fact, day one of the Obama era was a
disappointment for the DPRK since the president’s inauguration team
snubbed an unusual North Korean request to send an envoy to the
inauguration ceremony. The rejection barely made headlines and it
seemed prudent at the time for a young progressive president to not
appear coddling of tyrants.

But in retrospect, the White House may have squandered an easy
opportunity to give face to Pyongyang, opening the door for engagement
and respect, without giving anything concrete away. Pyongyang showed
initiative in wanting to send an emissary to witness the historic
moment of Obama’s inauguration; Obama’s team may have mistaken this
opportunity for one of many to come, rather than for the litmus test
that—in the eyes of Pyongyang—they failed.

From Pyongyang’s perspective, the second negative indicator was the
relative delay in appointing a special representative on the North
Korean issue.

Two days after inauguration, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and
Vice President Joe Biden personally announced, with great fanfare, the
appointment of a special envoy for Middle East peace and special
representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan. But a special
representative for North Korean policy was not announced for another
month, during which time North Korea experts warned of the importance
of staying ahead of North Korea diplomatically, and obviating
Pyongyang’s need for attention-grabbing brinkmanship.

The appointment of Ambassador Stephen Bosworth, a highly-respected
diplomat who had recently traveled to Pyongyang, was itself
second-guessed, even in South Korea, for the fact that he was keeping
his day job as dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at
Tufts University. At the time of his appointment as Af-Pak rep, Richard
Holbrooke was serving as chairman of the Asia Society—where I work—and
it would have been inconceivable that he carry on in that capacity. The
delayed appointment of a half-time envoy to North Korea must have had a
deflating effect for anyone high-up in Pyongyang who hoped for
“change.”

The third sign to Pyongyang that there was nothing terribly new in Obama’s approach to the peninsula was Clinton’s Asian tour.

The Secretary sent well-crafted, friendly, and respectful bilateral
messages in Tokyo, Seoul, and Beijing. East Asia lauded her trip as a
resounding success. But one casualty of her astute bilateralism was the
message received in Pyongyang. Clinton met with the families of
abductees in Japan and ruminated on the death of Kim Jong Il with
reporters on her flight to Seoul—stepping on two “third rails” of North
Korean diplomacy. Emphasizing the importance of Japan and South
Korea—both of whose governments are locked in hostility with North
Korea—Clinton’s trip did little to assuage North Korean insecurities,
or generate optimism about a new relationship with the United States.

Yet, Washington, already suffering Pyongyang fatigue from the back
and forth of the Six Party Talks, tells a very different story. The
North Koreans just don’t seem ready to be engaged. If this were a
schoolyard fight, the State Department spokesman would be forgiven for
crying out—“but he started it!”

Not long into the new president’s term, satellite imagery detected
suspicious activity at the rocket launch site on North Korea’s
northwest coast. Pyongyang announced plans on February 24 to launch a
satellite rocket, which three of the six parties immediately
pre-condemned as a violation of the United Nations Security Council
resolution banning the DPRK from activities related to its ballistic
missile program.

Three weeks later, Pyongyang announced it had taken legal steps to
make its satellite launch fully compliant with international laws and
norms governing the use of space (I argued that Obama cut his losses,
defuse the tension, and not let the launch derail peninsula diplomacy).

Washington tried to stay cool, even as its main allies in the
region, Tokyo and Seoul, threatened to punish North Korea for a launch.
In the immediate lead-up to the launch, Obama’s deputies offered
carrots and sticks—National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair called
for “international opprobrium,” while Bosworth held out the bait of
“direct talks” if Pyongyang would call off their launch at the last
minute.

Of course, the North Korean government went ahead with its launch,
timed to tear at the coattails of Obama’s Prague speech on nuclear arms
control. The president cited North Korea’s actions as evidence of the
need for an enhanced non-proliferation regime:

“Just this morning, we were reminded again of why we need a
new and more rigorous approach to address this threat. North Korea
broke the rules once again by testing a rocket that could be used for
long range missiles. This provocation underscores the need for
action—not just this afternoon at the U.N. Security Council, but in our
determination to prevent the spread of these weapons. Rules must be
binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something. The
world must stand together to prevent the spread of these weapons. Now
is the time for a strong international response—(applause)—now is the
time for a strong international response, and North Korea must know
that the path to security and respect will never come through threats
and illegal weapons. All nations must come together to build a
stronger, global regime. And that’s why we must stand shoulder to
shoulder to pressure the North Koreans to change course.”

The president’s language indicates that he gets what the North
Koreans are after—security and respect. But it’s too bad Obama’s
attention was drawn to North Korea in the context of missile and nukes,
reinforcing the narrow definition of the problem, which virtually
ensures there will be no solution (standing “shoulder to shoulder to
pressure the North Koreans” is a sure way to ensure anything but their
changing course).

Obama has a rather unique intuition about conflict resolution, a
subtle grasp of the ways history and ideology can imprison individuals
and communities in mutual contempt, whereas recognizing the validity of
conflicting values can lead to reconciliation and progress. Those
instincts would serve him well if applied to the deep sources of
conflict on the Korean peninsula. But with the domestic economy
teetering and the Taliban on the outskirts of Islamabad, Obama probably
just wishes Pyongyang could hang tight for a bit.

He might also be calculating that it would be prudent to focus his
engagement capital on those “pariah” states that are somewhat less
provocative. Does trying to bring North Korea into the unofficial “Axis
of Engagement” jeopardize efforts elsewhere, leaving Obama open to
attack for being too soft? Where is the domestic constituency in the
United States that would support forward-looking American initiative?
Why antagonize Tokyo and Seoul with proactive engagement toward the
DPRK, when Pyongyang seems to be flouting UN authority? And is there
anyone in Pyongyang capable of requiting American engagement, or is a
sickly Kim Jong Il increasingly captive to a hard-line military
oligarchy with no interest in economic and political opening?

These are among the questions Obama is likely asking himself, in so
far as he has time and inclination to mull over the Korean peninsula at
all.

The central argument of my World Policy Journal “Letter to the
President” was that Obama should focus on finding a proactive and
creative way to solve the underlying problem with North Korea: its
isolation—political, economic, and cultural—from so much of the world
community, and its abnormal and antagonistic relations with the United
States. He and Clinton certainly have the requisite talent and
knowledge on their foreign policy team to devise a comprehensive
strategy of engagement but the mission needs to be defined as such.

American foreign policy has the great capacity to initiate a change
of course and transform its relationship with an adversary. To wait for
Pyongyang to initiate the change is futile, dangerous and tragic. It’s
up to Obama to turn things around.

For his first 100 days, he deserves a grade of…

On North Korea: C

John Delury is director of the China Boom Project and associate
director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society.

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